{"id":186005,"date":"2014-06-16T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/06\/16\/because-snoops-think-that-it-is-all-about-them\/"},"modified":"2014-06-16T20:45:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-17T01:45:00","slug":"because-snoops-think-that-it-is-all-about-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/06\/16\/because-snoops-think-that-it-is-all-about-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Because, Snoops Think that it Is All About Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

It now appears that one impetus for the US state security apparatus to spy on all of us was to cover its own ass<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You may have heard about the government\u2019s spying on the Associated Press<\/a>. And high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney told Washington\u2019s Blog that the government also spied<\/a> on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen<\/a>, and chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen<\/a>.<\/span>

<\/span>But Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake<\/a> tells Washington\u2019s Blog that the spying on reporters started 12 years<\/i> ago \u2013 in 2002 \u2013 and has been fairly systematic.<\/span>

<\/span>By way of background, Drake had championed the \u201cThinThread\u201d program, which automatically encrypted Americans\u2019 data<\/a> (data could only be decrypted after a court found there was probable cause that the American was a bad guy).<\/span>
But after 9\/11, NSA instead adopted the competing \u201cStellar Wind\u201d system, which didn\u2019t<\/i> protect Americans\u2019 privacy, and was less effective and more expensive.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>There was a program called \u201cFirst Fruits\u201d. They\u2019ve no doubt changed the name of the program [since then.]<\/span><\/p>\n

And that First Fruits program was a cutout<\/em> which was designed from all of the domestic surveillance take. \u201cLet\u2019s just pipe off from all\u201d that is involving designated [reporters] \u2026 or in some cases whole groups of reporters and journalists<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 So you\u2019re targeting actual newspapers. You\u2019re targeting media outlets.<\/span><\/p>\n

And you\u2019re monitoring \u2013 on a persistent basis<\/em> \u2013 their communications.<\/span><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON\u2019S BLOG:<\/strong><\/em> How early did that start?<\/span><\/p>\n

THOMAS DRAKE:<\/strong><\/em> The preliminary version of that \u2013 as far as an active program \u2013 was in 2002<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis original<\/i>)<\/p>\n

When secrecy is used as a weapon to cover up ones own misdeeds, not only does it breed more secrecy, it breeds more misdeeds.<\/p>\n

Our secret security state is not protecting us.  It is petri dish for incompetence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It now appears that one impetus for the US state security apparatus to spy on all of us was to cover its own ass: You may have heard about the government\u2019s spying on the Associated Press. And high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney told Washington\u2019s Blog that the government also spied on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1062,969,1129,1103,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-espionage","category-evil","category-journalism","category-secrecy","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}